Monday, April 24, 2006
Use of Standardised Tests
There are two points from this article which attracted my interest, namely, the use of standardized tests in United States and the mind-set in the use of standardized tests.
The United States examination system is moving towards standardized tests and exams while we are trying to move away from it. The article described how HSGE used standardized tests to analyse not how good the students are, but how good the teachers instructions are. It is a how they frame the problem that is important as that will impact on how standardized tests are being used. In Singapore, the main purpose of standardized tests is some form of normalised testing, i.e. find out how students are performing relative to the others. However, because of this competitive mindset, there have been some negative consequences in which teachers and students approach standardized tests. This mindset has been carried forward to non-standardized assessment instruments like SPA (even though SPA looks very standardized at this moment, it wasn't meant to be) and Project Work. This has therefore led to implementation problems. The perpetual framework of normalised assessment has to be re-framed both at the Ministry as well as schools in order for non-standardized school based assessment to work in more holistic ways.
The United States examination system is moving towards standardized tests and exams while we are trying to move away from it. The article described how HSGE used standardized tests to analyse not how good the students are, but how good the teachers instructions are. It is a how they frame the problem that is important as that will impact on how standardized tests are being used. In Singapore, the main purpose of standardized tests is some form of normalised testing, i.e. find out how students are performing relative to the others. However, because of this competitive mindset, there have been some negative consequences in which teachers and students approach standardized tests. This mindset has been carried forward to non-standardized assessment instruments like SPA (even though SPA looks very standardized at this moment, it wasn't meant to be) and Project Work. This has therefore led to implementation problems. The perpetual framework of normalised assessment has to be re-framed both at the Ministry as well as schools in order for non-standardized school based assessment to work in more holistic ways.
# posted by Sherwin Cheng @ 7:05 PM 
